“The daily grind does hold people back”: Pink Spaghetti’s Caroline Gowing on helping out busy entrepreneurs, being a flexible employer and navigating grief at work

From pivoting services and business models to hitting a £3m turnover and losing her co-founder, Pink Spaghetti’s Caroline Gowing knows what resilience looks like.

Pink Spaghetti – it’s a name that sticks in the mind, and not one you’d automatically assume belongs to an award-winning small business support firm with a £3m turnover. But it does. 

Launched in 2009 and franchised in 2012, its virtual assistants pick up the slack for busy small business entrepreneurs, offering them everything from inbox management to social media support. The firm has been on quite a journey over the past seventeen years; it has pivoted its services, hit a multi-million turnover rate, has a client relationship that is nearly as old as the business itself, and has, very sadly, weathered the tragedy of personal loss. 

The story began in 2009 when Caroline Gowing and Vicky Matthews, two female professionals and friends with young children, were facing a personal and professional crossroads. 

From a crossroads crisis to a business

Gowing, a consultant, wondered whether she should take another contract while Matthews had just accepted voluntary redundancy; the big question of what was next hung over the pair. Then came that wonderful eureka moment for starting a business, let’s call it Pink Spaghetti 1.0: “We started as a home PA service, not a small business PA service,” explains Gowing.

“As two busy mums with corporate careers, we never had enough time to do anything, but we were always the organised ones. We were the researchers, the bookers of restaurants, nights out, and holidays with our families. We knew we had those skills and loved doing those things. We also felt that we were going to help other parents and be a kind of concierge service, but not for the people that already had the high-end concierge service, for the normal, hardworking people, who had kids, pressures of time.” 

Once the co-founders realised that several of these hardworking parent clients had their own small businesses to run, Pink Spaghetti, named after their children’s favourite food and colour, moved into the small business support space. “The daily grind does hold people back,” Gowing admits. “We do what the business owner could do if they had the time. It doesn’t matter what that business is, 80% of the background is the same, and that’s where we can add value.”

The firm has captured a clever part of the virtual business assistance market, meaning it isn’t in direct competition with specialist agencies in terms of services or pricing: “Most of the people we deal with don’t have £1,500, £2,000 a month to be spending on that,” says Gowing.

She summarises it as this: If a small business owner had two extra hands, they would be doing what Pink Spaghetti does, but they are too busy running their business to stay on top of things like a mounting email inbox, general admin, or to regularly post on social media. In short, it provides all-rounder support that small businesses most need.

While AI seems to dominate conversations these days, Pink Spaghetti’s virtual assistants, Gowing will have you know, are very much human. Client communications begin with a coffee meeting or phone call to assess needs. “No two businesses are the same,” she states. “The first thing is to find out the pinch points for that client; what’s important to them? What don’t they like? So, it is about talking.” Finding the customer’s voice is also a key part of the process. “If we’re posting on social media or answering emails on their behalf, our biggest learning curve is what’s their voice? How do they want to come across? What language do they use?”

Many of Pink Spaghetti’s business clients are found through in-person networking. “It was a surprise to me, having come from the corporate world, just how many events are out there,” says Gowing of the small business community. “It’s nattering with purpose,” she says of networking, “to be able to get to know business owners, understand why they’re in business, and what their USP is.”

Once Pink Spaghetti’s virtual assistants get down to work, adapting communication styles for clients is an essential part of the job.

The art of small business communication

“Every client is different,” Gowing says. “Personally, if I get a long email with loads of information in it, I open it and think, I need to come back to that. But some people love that. Some like WhatsApp, and some would rather have a phone call. Some don’t want to hear from us unless there’s a big problem, while others say once a week. Some we don’t hear from for months.”

The firm’s open and adaptive communication approach, she believes, has helped them support different kinds of minds: “When we’ve had neurodiverse clients, communicating differently really helps them out. And actually, that’s been the case for non-neurodiverse clients too. Even within a team, you can say, well, yeah, I like getting a WhatsApp. I like having videos. I like a detailed email. So, actually, now it is something that we bring up early on and review with a client. Get that right, and we get answers quicker. We’re then able to help them more quickly, so it’s better for our business.”

The Pink Spaghetti approach to handling clients seems to be working. For one, 83% of its client base use its services monthly rather than as-and-when, showing the extent to which business owners value regular and consistent support. Plus, its longest-standing client, once a two-person startup and now a business with 200-plus staff, has been with them for fifteen years.

Moving away from clients, what about the Pink Spaghetti team?

“You can still have five-day-a-week coverage if people job share,” she says. “So many businesses I speak to feel that by losing that full-timer, they’re going to lose everything.”

Well, the business, which now operates on a franchise model, was founded by working mothers, and according to Gowing, it continues to attract this cohort as franchisees, who are looking for greater flexibility in their careers.

The working mother business model

Just as Gowing and her co-founder were at a professional crossroads in 2009, other working mothers continue to be. “That crossroads might be different things for different people,” she explains. “It could be that the kids are older, or they’re supporting older parents, or they’ve got a young family, and they are just not spending enough time with their family.” 

But what is an ex-employer’s drain, is Pink Spaghetti’s gain: “We meet people that are handing their notice in with their current employer because they have not been listened to, they’ve not been given the flexibility.”

But how flexible is Pink Spaghetti as a place to work? “It is as flexible as they want it to be,” confirms Gowing. “You are going to need to be doing the chargeable work. Does that chargeable work need to happen nine to five every day? No, it doesn’t. And if you want to work absolutely within those school hours, that is within your control.”

“If the right person is ready to start at half past eight, brilliant. If they’re doing a school run, and therefore half past nine would be a game-changer for them, we’ll start at half past nine.”

If you were still uncertain about how Pink Spaghetti treats its franchisees, just look at the shortlist at the British Franchise Awards last year, where the firm bagged finalist spots for Franchisor of the Year and Franchise Support.

Gowing rates output higher than rigid timelines for work success: “In my experience, if you give somebody more flexibility, the amount they fit into those hours is incredible. People working a shorter amount of hours are incredibly productive.”

While COVID expedited remote and hybrid working styles, Gowing questions the extent of flexibility. “The place that people are working may have changed, but I don’t see the core of flexibility changing a huge amount. People are at their desks and on calls and expected to be there, and still for a very, very fixed time.”

In her view, remote doesn’t always mean flexible: “It’s rare that we would hear of somebody who’s got flexibility within their role, even if they’re based at home. So, they might have a child who is sick, and the ability to say, well, I’m going to get up really early or go work at night, just doesn’t seem to be there.”

With any illness, and actually very dramatically with Vicky’s, things changed every week, every single week.

Her advice for employers with employees who are also mothers? Be realistic about expectations and don’t pressurise. Job-sharing, she thinks, is one positive proposal for women who need to take a step back: “You can still have five-day-a-week coverage if people job share,” she says. “So many businesses I speak to feel that by losing that full-timer, they’re going to lose everything.”

She then advises on growing a team around a pro-mother, flexible working model. “As the business builds, employ people who work to complement you. So if you want to take a Friday off, then maybe your first hire has to work on a Friday to give you that coverage.”

For Gowing, she’d “rather have the right person” for the job than set specific working conditions. “If the right person is ready to start at half past eight, brilliant. If they’re doing a school run, and therefore half past nine would be a game-changer for them, we’ll start at half past nine.” Lucky for this co-founder, should an urgent client task come in, she can rely on her network of franchisees. However, within smaller businesses, there may not be such manpower to facilitate this level of flexibility.

While all entrepreneurs worth their salt experience challenges and adversity, what is less common, and so much more profound, is the loss of a co-founder. Unfortunately, Gowing experienced this when Matthews passed away from brain cancer in 2023. 

Navigating loss and finding support

Keeping up good communication helped the pair cope: “We learned that because we had experience with another female founder who had gotten poorly very suddenly,” she explains. “With any illness, and actually very dramatically with Vicky’s, things changed every week, every single week. How you feel, how capable you are, the latest diagnosis, the latest treatment. So, communicate and be as open as you can with those around you because all people want to do is support.”

Those around the founders most often were the Pink Spaghetti team. “We couldn’t have done it without them,” Gowing says. “Vicky died eleven months after diagnosis; we couldn’t have done it without the team enabling Vicky to come into work even when she wasn’t particularly well enough to do so, to keep that normality for Vicky’s sake.”

For Gowing, that unity of support helped when the worst happened: “They were just amazing. And actually, that takes you through because we grieved together. I have known Vicky for a very long time. So it was very difficult.”

Gowing’s parting advice to entrepreneurs going through something deeply serious and personal? It’s simply this: communicate the fact. “Don’t be afraid to ask for help or support, people will do it with bells on.”

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